


A Haunting

by earlgreytea68



Series: Schrodingerverse [6]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27318931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: What do you do for Halloween in the middle of a pandemic?
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Series: Schrodingerverse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687264
Comments: 46
Kudos: 105
Collections: Trick Or Pete 2020





	A Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to carbon for brainstorming with me when this was just a tiny germ of an idea and helping me to see the direction it could go! And thank you to all of you online folks who are always endlessly so encouraging!

Patrick hates the idea of being an hysterical dad. Like, he doesn’t want to be That Dad that the kid hides everything from because he’s going to overreact and be ridiculous. Patrick really doesn’t want to be That Dad but he feels like this fucking pandemic has turned him into that.

“I probably need therapy,” he announces, without preamble, staring at their bedroom ceiling. The ceiling is an elaborate tray ceiling with soft recessed lighting. Probably a bunch of spiders live up there in the crevices. This is yet another reason for Patrick to need therapy.

“Look,” Pete says reasonably, “everyone could benefit from a little bit of therapy now and then.” Pete crawls onto the foot of the bed, kisses Patrick’s knee, and then keeps crawling up the rest of the way. He’s wearing an ancient hoodie and threadbare sweatpants, and that tells Patrick that he’s feeling the need for a little self-care, too, because he’s wrapped himself as softly as possible. “What’s the therapy about?”

“Oh, do you have your therapist hat on?”

“Pumping through your speakers, babe,” Pete replies cheerfully, kissing him lightly and then collapsing heavily onto his shoulder. Pete is adept at using every ounce of his slight frame as forcefully as possible. “Are you okay?” he asks softly, seriously.

“Yeah,” Patrick sighs, and kisses his head. “Halloween,” he says by way of explanation.

Pete’s heaved breath is from the _depths_ of his _soul_. Patrick smiles, despite his worrying. Pete is exactly the same melodramatic kid Patrick first met, in so many ways that Patrick finds so comforting, especially in times like these. But also: dramatic heaved sigh is totally called for. “Jesus Christ,” is what Pete says.

“I mean.” Patrick shifts, wiggling down to force Pete to look at him. “We didn’t let him have a birthday party, he couldn’t go back to school to play with his friends, and now we’re not letting him go trick-or-treating.”

“So are you saying we’re the worst parents?” asks Pete. “Because it sounds like you’re saying we’re the worst parents.”

“I mean, I don’t know,” says Patrick anxiously. “Are we?”

Pete sighs again and rolls onto his back. “Fuck. I don’t know. I feel like we’re just trying to keep him safe. Aren’t we?”

“Or are we overreacting?” counters Patrick.

“I’m a bad person to ask about overreacting,” remarks Pete.

They’re silent for a moment.

Then Pete says, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We should call Andy,” Patrick answers.

“We should call Andy,” Pete agrees.

***

They call while Tennyson is sulking over Zoom social studies. Most of the time, Tennyson doesn’t sulk about Zoom school. He long ago came to terms with the dragging-on nature of the pandemic. But he’s so upset about the Halloween situation that he has descended into perpetual sulk. It’s the third day of this sulk. Tennyson’s sulks are not usually so enduring, he usually loses interest in maintaining them.

Patrick’s worried maybe they broke him.

“You didn’t break him,” Andy says patiently. “Unless he’s in a cast that I don’t know about. Is he in a cast?”

“No,” Patrick says.

“Then he’s not broken.” Andy shrugs.

“If you had a kid, would you let them go trick-or-treating?” Pete asks.

“I have kids, my kids are dogs.”

“Okay, so would you let your dogs go trick-or-treating?” Pete asks. 

“Why do you call the one of us without kids to ask for this advice?”

“Because you’re the sensible one in the band,” Pete explains.

“Do you think I’m sensible because I didn’t have kids?” muses Andy.

This gives Pete obvious pause. “Whoa.” He looks at Patrick. “Is Andy the sensible one because he doesn’t have kids?”

“Andy’s the sensible one because he’s the drummer,” Patrick replies. “Drummers are clear thinkers.”

“You’re a drummer,” Andy points out.

“I’m, like, a semi-drummer now.”

“So he’s only a semi-clear thinker,” quips Pete.

Andy shakes his head a little and says, “He’s a kid having a tantrum. You may recall that you threw way worse tantrums than this over way smaller things. Both of you. At ages when you were supposed to be grown-ups. Give him a break.”

Patrick looks sheepishly at Pete and wonders if they’re going through the same supercut of epic sulks in their heads.

“Send my dogs some treats,” Andy commands, and ends the call.

***

Pete makes French toast for dinner, drowned in cinnamon and sugar. This is one of Tennyson’s favorite dinners from childhood, and Pete breaks it out whenever he feels he needs a little bit of extra ammunition on his side to inspire Tennyson love. Patrick is pretty sure Tennyson’s a smart enough kid to have picked up on this bribery but at the same time it always seems to work.

Tennyson thoughtfully pushes his French toast around and says, “It’s a lot easier to make decisions when we’re not living in an authoritarian state obscuring useful information.”

Patrick lifts his eyebrows and says, “Huh,” and then, “Agreed,” wondering where Tennyson picked that one up. It’s not exactly how he and Pete talk about the situation. They use a lot more one-syllable words like _fuck_ and _shit_.

“Uncle Andy called me,” Tennyson continues, and now that sentence makes total sense.

“Oh?” Pete says. “What did he have to say?”

Tennyson heaves a heavy, dramatic, Wentzian sigh. “That the two of you are doing the best you can to keep me safe in the face of zero reliable information.”

“Yes.” Pete nods. “We are.”

Tennyson sighs again and pokes at his French toast some more. “It’s fine, there’s just, like, _nothing_ good to look forward to _ever_.”

“We’ll still dress up in costumes,” Pete says. “Of course. We’ll make it as much fun as we can. We’ll buy lots of candy and eat it all ourselves. It’ll be awesome.”

Tennyson manages a tremulous smile.

***

Pete and Tennyson are researching techniques for the most complicated costumes in the history of Halloween. They want to build sets for their costumes to exist in, like they’re holding a Halloween pageant. At one point Patrick overhears them debating the possibility of buying chipmunks to serve as accessories (“Can we keep them as pets afterward?” “Are chipmunks domesticated?”). Bella has definitely been enlisted, and patiently sits while they wrap her in fabric that Pete pins and tucks like he’s going to turn into a tailor overnight. Bella turns pleading eyes on Patrick but he can only rescue her with walks so often.

While Pete and Tennyson are preoccupied with their incredible costumes, Patrick decides that he would like to add some kind of fun. Like, he doesn’t want to be left out of Halloween festivities. And that’s how it all starts. He Googles _how to make believe your house is haunted_.

***

The recommendation from the websites is that you need sound effects, like, nobody believes in a ghost without sound effects. Sounds convincing to Patrick. If he just started to hide things or move things around, nobody in their chaotic household would ever suspect a ghost. That’s just life in their house.

Or maybe they already _have_ a ghost and they just haven’t considered that possibility yet.

Patrick considers that possibility for thirty seconds, then decides that no, they don’t have a ghost, because they haven’t heard a ghost, and apparently you’re supposed to _hear_ ghosts.

Patrick spends some time downloading spooky sounds on his phone. He picks out a bunch, like, creaking chains and echoey footsteps and labored breathing. He thinks they’re appropriately spooky.

Then he reads the make-believe haunting directions again and reconsiders. He cannot put all of these spooky sounds on _his_ phone. Either Pete will come across them accidentally while playing Candy Crush on Patrick’s phone or it’ll be immediately apparent that Patrick doesn’t have his phone whenever the sounds show up.

So Patrick literally orders a second fucking phone. He feels ridiculous doing it. Like, maybe this is taking things a step too far. But then he looks at Tennyson and Pete, their faces alight as they work on their costumes – there is now a papier-mache submarine being created; Patrick doesn’t ask questions – and he thinks, no, no, his two Wentzes will _love_ this, it’s totally worth it, the pandemic could use a little splurge.

But this also means he needs to hide the cell phone purchase. That’s surprisingly easy to do. Packages come to their house endlessly, so what’s one more? And Patrick tracks it and intercepts it at the front door and it luckily happens while Tennyson is at virtual school and Pete is pretending like he supervises virtual school.

So Patrick gets a new cell phone and smuggles it into the studio. He loads it with all of the creepy sounds, and then he experiments. And then he frowns. Like, surely the creepy sounds should be layered together, like, that would be the _right_ way to do this.

So then Patrick finds himself sitting in the music studio layering the precise freakiest combination of spooky sounds.

And then, if he’s going to go through all that effort, like, there should be a musical accompaniment, right? Every good haunting needs a soundtrack to ratchet up the suspense.

This is how Patrick finds himself plucking out spine-chilling noises on the piano, trying to find the most discordant chords to jangle together.

Pete knocks on the door and says, “Yo,” poking his head around it, and Patrick tries to look nonchalant and not at all like he’s composing a soundtrack to the pretend haunting prank he’s going to play.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?” Honestly, he feels like he used to be decent at this pranking stuff. He’s out-of-practice with it, and also pandemic life makes it difficult to keep a secret, let’s be honest.

“The child creature thinks we should feed him or something,” Pete says.

“Outrageous demand,” responds Patrick blandly.

“Yeah, he’s a spoiled brat. But I don’t know, you bought that marinated pork tenderloin thing, how long can that take to cook, like, ten minutes?”

“Possibly longer than ten minutes,” Patrick supposes.

Pete shrugs.

***

Patrick really hopes Pete doesn’t ask to hear the music he’s working on. He’s spending an inordinate amount of time in the studio but it’s all preparing this increasingly elaborate prank he’s got planned. Like, it was supposed to be a little bit of spooky ghost noises, and now he’s got a prank-dedicated cell phone, and a soundtrack, and he’s even written out a little script, just a rough sketch of how he wants the prank to go. Like, what the fuck is he even _doing_?

But Pete and Tennyson are so caught up in their Halloween project, they want it to be the best Halloween ever, and they’re so _determined_. Tennyson is so _determined_ to keep a bright outlook on the Halloween he’s got even though it’s not what any kid wanted, and Pete is so _determined_ to be equally optimistic about it, to pretend that this is totally a good-enough Halloween. Tennyson actually handles disappointment better than Pete, Patrick knows from experience, so the effort it’s costing Pete to stay upbeat through this – through this whole pandemic – Patrick knows it’s a lot.

“Hey,” he whispers to him, after Tennyson’s gone to bed, when it’s just the two of them on the couch.

Pete is reading, one of those wordy novels he’s always loved and that Patrick’s never understood because none of them are ever as good as the jumble of Pete’s pre-lyrics. Patrick’s watching _Great British Baking Show_ on mute because he doesn’t want to distract Pete too much and anyway he just likes the soothing shots of butter and milk and flour becoming something more delicious than Patrick’s eaten in a long time.

“Hey, yourself,” Pete replies distractedly, not looking up from his book.

Patrick reconsiders disturbing him, looks back at his Netflix.

“What?” Pete asks inquisitively, and wiggles his toes under Patrick’s thigh.

“No, it’s fine, didn’t mean to interrupt your reading,” Patrick says.

“You didn’t.” Pete crawls onto his lap.

“I definitely did.”

“I was looking for an interruption,” Pete says, grinding down, and yeah, he does seem like he’s got other things on his mind at the moment that aren’t reading. He leans down to catch Patrick’s lower lip teasingly between his teeth, the lip he’s always freaking out over for no reason, tugs, then murmurs, “What were you going to say?”

Patrick tangles his hand into Pete’s hair. “That you’re doing a good job with this,” he mumbles into a kiss.

“This?” echoes Pete, and kisses him back.

“The pandemic—Halloween—I know it’s been rough.”

Pete slides his tongue against Patrick’s, brief and teasing, and then pulls back. “It’s been rough for seven months now, I forget what it felt like before.”

“I know, I—”

“Were you really just going to tell me out of the blue just now that I’m doing a good job handling Halloween in the pandemic? Like, that’s what you were thinking?”

“Well, yeah.” Patrick is confused by the question. “You are.”

“I’m going to blow you so good for that right now, Patrick Stump,” says Pete, and slides off his lap to the floor.

“For _that_?” Patrick says, like, that’s just the _truth_ , but hey, he’s not going to argue.

***

Patrick’s got an escalating scale of haunting. They say you can’t do too much too fast, or people get suspicious.

So he starts by hiding the cell phone on a top bookshelf in the living room, and with the simplicity of ghostly footsteps that he activates innocently while he and Pete are cleaning up from dinner.

Tennyson’s in the living room setting up a videogame, and Patrick intended the footsteps for his benefit. He doesn’t expect Pete to suddenly pick his head up from loading the dishwasher and say, “Do you hear that?”

Patrick stares at him. Suddenly Pete has supersonic hearing?

Tennyson comes dashing into the room. “Dad! I heard _footsteps_! There’s someone in the house!”

“I heard them, too,” Pete says grimly. “You stay here with Patrick while I search the house.”

“Hang on,” Patrick says. Oops. This wasn’t the intended result. “I didn’t hear anything. You’re overreacting.”

“I _know_ I heard them,” Tennyson says, wide-eyed.

Patrick feels bad. He’s not cut out for pranking anymore. “Well, maybe they’re—”

“Could be squatters,” muses Pete, looking up at the ceiling suspiciously, like he can see the squatters.

“Squatters?” Patrick echoes, distracted from Tennyson by the sheer unlikelihood of the scenarios in Pete’s head. “You think squatters got into our gated neighborhood, past our gated driveway, and into our heavily alarmed house? And they’re squatting…where? The extra bedroom you have filled with dirty t-shirts from Warped Tour 2004?”

“Hey, those shirts are an important part of music history,” Pete says.

“What are we going to do about the squatters?” Tennyson asks worriedly.

“There aren’t any squatters,” Patrick says. “It’s probably a ghost.”

Pete and Tennyson stare at him.

“Look,” Patrick begins, ready to confess to the whole thing.

Except that’s when Pete says excitedly, “Oh, my God, do you think the house might be _haunted_?”

“Dad! _Dad_!” Tennyson leaps around Pete like he doesn’t already have Pete’s attention. “We have a _ghost_! We can get on _Ghost Hunters_!”

“We can _totally_ get on _Ghost Hunters_ ,” Pete enthuses.

Wow, that escalated quickly, thinks Patrick. “Okay, you heard footsteps, like, once.”

“ _Ghostly_ footsteps,” Tennyson corrects him.

“Fine, but that seems like a leap to get from footsteps to _Ghost Hunters_ in, like, ten seconds,” Patrick points out.

“Patrick,” Tennyson says, disappointment heavy in his voice.

Both of his Wentzes look at him sadly, like he just said he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.

“Patrick, you need to believe in Halloween magic,” Pete tells him earnestly.

And then he and Tennyson go off discussing ghost traps.

Well, fuck, he’s already lost control of this.

***

But the thing is: the prank’s doing exactly what he hoped it would. All he did was play the footsteps, and Tennyson and Pete spend the entire night excitedly researching ghosts and texting everyone they know to tell them about the ghost.

So, if his objective was to entertain Tennyson and Pete, he’s definitely achieved it.

The next night he layers into the soundscape some artfully pitched ghost moans.

Tennyson and Pete go _wild_ over it.

And Patrick is wracked with doubt now. Tennyson and Pete _love_ this ghost. They’re worried he’s moaning because of how unsettled he is.

Patrick is regretting everything about this prank.

“You know the ghost?” he says, as they’re brushing their teeth that night.

Pete spits into the sink. “Irving?”

Patrick stares at him. “What?”

“His name is Irving.” Pete shrugs as he exits the bathroom. “As in Washington,” he calls back.

Oh, fuck, they have _named_ the ghost. Patrick looks at his horrified, pale reflection in the mirror, then follows Pete into the bedroom. “Pete, I have to tell you something about the ghost.”

Pete sits up on the bed and takes his shirt off and says, “Do you, Patrick? Do you have to tell me something about the ghost?” and lifts an eyebrow at him.

Patrick hesitates, unsure. “Um.”

“You _dork_ ,” Pete says, and throws his shirt in Patrick’s face.

Patrick catches it automatically, confused.

“No,” Pete says, grabbing Patrick by the t-shirt to tug Patrick forward onto the bed. “You sexy, sexy dork.”

“You know, I totally get why I was so confused about sex for two decades of my life,” Patrick tells him, tumbled half over Pete.

Pete laughs as he kisses him, and says, “What do you want to tell me about Irving, Patrick?”

The indulgent spark in those gold eyes makes Patrick shake his head. “How long have you known I was behind the ghost?”

“Since you fucking suggested it. Patrick, you are the last person on the entire fucking planet to believe in ghosts over squatters.”

“ _Squatters_ , Pete?”

“There were footsteps in the house, Patrick!”

“It was supposed to be a prank!”

“It’s a good prank. It’s a sexy prank. You’re my sexy dork. Take your shirt off.”

“No, really, we have weird sex,” Patrick says, taking his shirt off.

“Uh-huh,” Pete agrees, hands cupping Patrick’s ass inside his sweatpants.

“I wanted to be in on all the Halloween fun you and Tennyson were having, and now I’m really worried that you’ve named this ghost and Tennyson’s going to be super-disappointed when I reveal there’s no ghost. Or does Tennyson know, too?”

“I don’t know. He might suspect. But it doesn’t matter. We’re going to have a séance and give Irving a happy ending. Send him over to the other side. It’s all good.”

“We’re going to have a séance?” This is news to Patrick.

“A _sexy_ séance,” Pete says.

“Please stop, not everything has to be sexy,” Patrick begs him.

“Hey, Patrick, how about you ouija my board?” asks Pete.

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Patrick counters.

“Let me give you some ideas,” says Pete.

***

Pete tells him to keep going with the haunting, which is how they advance to Patrick’s jangly creepy piano chords that then dissolve into _Theme for the Ghost_. Which was what Patrick named the file.

They listen to the ghostly piano sonata drift through their living room, and Pete lifts his eyebrows at Patrick, like, _Of course you wrote theme music for the ghost, of course you did_.

Patrick makes a face he hopes says, _I’m a musician, sue me_.

Tennyson says, “Whoa. Irving likes music, too! That must be why he chose us to haunt!”

“Yeah,” Pete says drolly. “Imagine that. We’re being haunted by a ghost who comes with a soundtrack. What are the odds.”

Patrick glares at him, and Pete visibly bites his cheek against his laughter.

“Patrick, you should write the ghost a song for the séance,” Tennyson suggests innocently, and it’s remarks like that that makes Patrick wonder if Tennyson’s onto them, if maybe they’re all just indulging each other in this Halloween foolishness. But whatever, it’s a distraction, and they clearly all need that right now, so yeah, Patrick composes a fucking song for the fucking séance.

Pete lifts his eyebrows again when he takes his guitar to the séance and Patrick says out loud this time, “I’m a musician, sue me.”

“Never,” Pete replies, “my dad handles all the suing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick says, and sits at his appointed seat.

They’re holding the séance in their living room, the room where Irving lives. Or after-lives. Whatever. Pete and Tennyson have lit candles all over. Bella looks like she doesn’t know what to make of everything, and she barks experimentally at the flickering shadows cast on the wall, then decides she doesn’t care enough and curls up under the table to sleep.

Tennyson puts his tablet on the table. It’s open to a website headed _How to Hold a Séance_ in glowing purple sparkling font. It’s like being back in Pete’s fucking LJ days, thinks Patrick.

“We have to summon the ghost,” Tennyson says seriously, and reaches his hand out to Pete. “I’d hold your hand, Patrick, but you need your hand to play your song for the ghost. That’s going to be our summoning.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. “I wrote kind of a…going-away song. Like, sending him on his way. I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“Yes,” Tennyson says. “That’s what we’re doing.”

“We’re summoning so he can leave,” Pete says. “It’s like the word ‘aloha.’ It’s hello and good-bye all at once.”

“Okay,” Patrick says doubtfully, and strums his guitar a bit to lead himself into his song, and then he sings. _We hope you had a good time while you were here with us, But we hear the afterparty is even greater fun, You’ve got the invitation, it’s okay to go away, We hope your journey’s lovely, see you later, bon voyage._

Tennyson and Pete both beam at him like the song’s great, even though it’s not much at all and Patrick threw it together.

“There you go, Irving,” Tennyson says softly. “Bon voyage.”

There is a moment of still and intense silence.

Because Patrick’s not manipulating his ghostly cell phone into any haunting sounds.

Pete says, “Sounds like maybe he went on his way.”

“Yeah,” says Tennyson, and then, “This has been a great Halloween. Thanks.”

And honestly, that is all Patrick wanted.

***

“This has been a great Halloween,” Pete tells him in bed that night. “Thanks.”

Okay, Patrick wanted that, too.


End file.
